News

I saw Pitfall, Deported, Fly-By-Night, and Cry Danger over the weekend. I’ll see four more later this week. On opening night, Eddie Muller opened the festival with this brilliant tribute to film noir called “The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir”:

Amazingly, this wonderful video was edited together by a 20-year old girl named Serena Bramble. Her homage brought the house down.

Eddie Muller’s annual film noir festival starts next week in San Francisco and I am fired up. The film noir expert and author of books like Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir and Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir has a fantastic lineup this year. Several screenings will involve movies that have yet to see a dvd release. This year’s theme is “lust and larceny” and it will be the first time I’ve attended the legendary Castro Theatre. For those interested, you can go to this website and see the program:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means that the Christmas season is about to officially start. As always, I’ll turn to my old DVD stand-bys: Christmas In Connecticut, Meet Me In St. Louis, A Christmas Story, I’ll Be Seeing You, and so on. But I’m really excited because this year one of my favorite Christmas movies, which I’ve only had on VHS until now, is being released on DVD.

TCM has been diligently airing Remember the Night every Christmas season for the past few years now, helping classic film fans rediscover this sweet and romantic holiday gem. Starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, it’s the unlikely love story between a petty thief and the DA trying to put her away. Stanwyck and MacMurray are mostly known together for their work in Double Indemnity, but this is a completely different kind of film.

Remember the Night is coming to DVD as part of TCM’s new Universal On Demand service, which is a lot like the really awesome but kind of needlessly expensive On Demand service Warner Bros. started earlier this year. Universal is taking it up a notch, though, with remastered material and special features. Their DVDs, even with the features, also appear to be cheaper than Warner Bros. Other titles released include Murders In the Zoo and The Mad Doctor of Market Street, both available on the 5-Disc Cult Horror Collection.

So definitely head over the TCM.com to pick this one up. Sadly, my money is so tightly budgeted for the next month for my trip to Chicago that I’m just going to have to be happy with my VHS copy for another year.

So, if you love obscure classic films and you want to write reviews and essays and the like, it’s your chance!

But please, only apply if you’re willing to commit yourself to the site. We will require our writers to update at least once a week. If you don’t have the time or the desire to commit to that, then don’t apply.

If you want to apply, email me at katieobscureclassics@yahoo.com and I’ll get back to you with what you need to do.

Carrie over at Classic Montgomery, who has always been a big supporter of our site, has recognized Obscure Classics with a Premio Dardos Award. This happened a few weeks ago, and it’s taken me forever to get around to it, because I wanted to think long and hard about who we passed it on to.

Thank you so much, Carrie!

The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

Rules

Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.

Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

I tried to look at all the blogs and make sure I was passing the award on to blogs that hadn’t recieved it, but in the end I’m not 100% sure whether these guys have or not. So if you already have one, congratulations, you now have two!

The lovely Sybille has alerted me to yet another Pre-code DVD set that will soon hit the market. Just a few weeks after the third volume of “Forbidden Hollywood” hits the shelves, Universal will release six of its classic pre-codes on the “Pre-Code Hollywood Collection”. The films are The Cheat, Merrilly We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, Murder at the Vanities, and Search For Beauty. It will also feature a documentary on the era. It will be released on April 7th.

Man, they are rolling these things out like crazy now. Which makes Katie a very happy girl. The third volume of Forbidden Hollywood, a series of pre-code DVD releases, will hit shelves on March 24th. That’s just 3 days before my birthday!

The focus of the set is “William Wellman at Warner Bros”, and the films on the set are…

Not quite as exciting a line-up as their past sets, but all very good, and essential pre-code films. Midnight Mary and Heroes for Sale are two of my all time favorite films.

There’s also a bonus disc with two documentaries on Wellman. The set also includes some short films and cartoons. And, all kinds of YAY!, commentaries on Midnight Mary, Heroes For Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road.

Classic Flix has the cover art…

I kind of wish it was just a general WB set instead of focusing on Wellman. That way we might be able to finally get Taxi! on DVD.

This is exciting news indeed. It looks like they were really serious when they said they wanted to get at least one of these sets out a year. Obviously sales are good enough for it. It’s just wonderful that these pre-code films are finally being released on DVD. And not just released, but released with beautiful prints and special features.

What are some other movies you’d like to see on these upcoming sets. Like I said, I’d love to see Taxi! And, naturally, Man’s Castle. Employees’ Entrance is one that really deserves a DVD release as well.